Healing Verse Poetry Hotline Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 1 2021

Location: 

Philadelphia

Philadelphia poet laureate Trapeta B. Mayson launched the Healing Verse Philly Poetry Line (1-855-763-6792), a toll-free telephone line that offers callers a 90-second poem by a Philadelphia-connected poet. A new poem will be featured each Monday throughout 2021.

In the context of a pandemic, a presidential election, and a racial reckoning, Healing Verse “offers a glimmer of hope because all those things impact us spiritually, mentally.” Mayson said in an interview Tuesday. “And now, more than ever, we need spaces to process.”

The focus is on “affirming poems,” she said. Mayson’s “In This Season” is the project’s inaugural poem.

“In this season of shifting, of barrier-breaking, undoing, unearthing, uprising, leveling, you, beloved, may think yourself too small,” she recites on the hotline. “But what a world you are! What sphere of shocking beauty and grace!”

Before callers get to the poetry, Mayson greets them in a buttery tone and lists out a menu. “To hear this week’s feature poem, press 1,” she says. “To hear about upcoming Healing Verse events, press 2. To hear about resources for mental health and well-being in the city of Philadelphia, press 3.”

Mayson said the idea of a poetry hotline came about last year during a pre-pandemic lunch with Yolanda Wisher, Philadelphia’s 2016 poet laureate. Then, before Mayson had a chance to lay down the groundwork for any of her initiatives as the city’s poet laureate for 2020-21, the coronavirus crisis hit.

“I was trying to figure out how to reach the people that I normally interacted with at libraries, in community centers, in neighborhoods,” Mayson said. “I’m a community-based teaching artist, and I wasn’t able to touch people who don’t have access to things like Zoom, YouTube, and podcasts.” As she thumbed through possible solutions, the poetry hotline idea returned.

Growing up in North Philadelphia in the early 1980s, Mayson remembers sitting on the linoleum floor in her parents’ kitchen, tangling her fingers around the yellow cord of the phone that was attached to the wall as she laughed with her friends about her teenage affairs.

During that time, “There was just a different reverence for taking the time to hear someone’s voice on a hotline. It was a sacred process. It was a very community, family-driven thing,” she said. “I wanted to be creative with poetry and push people to participate in something that might bring about nostalgia. Although it might be old school, it has a wider reach.”

Healing Verse also provides resources for suicide prevention, housing, and substance abuse. The hotline is supported by the Kelly Writers House and the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Posted by Anika Pyle on

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